


On Maggie Nelson's 'Bluets'

by orphan_account



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Childhood Friends, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 03:44:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8605972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Seungcheol and Seungkwan grow old but not together.





	

**Author's Note:**

> csc and bsk have sex a lot: the fic. projection: the fic. half-rambling, half-narrative: the fic. too many things going on: the fic.
> 
> beta'd in part by AO3 user aishiteita!!! you are the most wonderful <3
> 
> you can check out Bluets [here](http://www.eastofborneo.org/archives/bluets-by-maggie-nelson). it's a beautiful, beautiful book.

1.

The place where their fingers lead them to is precisely this: Seungcheol’s curled on Seungkwan’s hips, Seungkwan’s laced up in Seungcheol’s hair, their bodies pressed against the kitchen counter in a clumsy kiss that promises to be neither shy nor gentle—they fumble as if in a rush, as if it isn’t early in their Saturday evening and Seungcheol’s parents aren’t out of town to be back the next day. Seungcheol groans and pulls Seungkwan a little tighter, lets his mouth run a little slacker as if to tell Seungkwan _I’m all yours_.

Seungkwan pushes him away and leads him with a wide grin up the stairs to Seungcheol’s room, to the plain, forest green bedsheets that Seungkwan’s called his own at least once or twice—in the summer, the tally goes up to account for every other night Seungkwan ends up there, and they sleep with their fingers twined despite the heat, with the burnished skin of Seungcheol’s torso flat on the bed and Seungkwan’s shirt sticking to his back from sweat.

Tonight, it’s theirs to desecrate.

Seungcheol lays him down, smiling at his shivering. He first kisses Seungkwan on the mouth, flitting and a little shy, as if to ask if it’s all right or all wrong or just the in-between, then lets Seungkwan’s voice guide his mouth to the places it wishes to know, following the reiterations of _there there there_.

The categorisation: two (2) nipples, brown and pert and the size of the pad of Seungcheol’s thumb; three (3) moles along the side of Seungkwan’s ear and two (2) near his mouth; ten (10) fingers fisting the bedsheets; five (5) short gasps and one (1) _please_ ; four (4) fat tears rolling down Seungkwan’s cheeks before Seungcheol wipes them away, two (2) on either side.

Then the trembling. Then the smile.

“My ass hurts,” Seungkwan complains. Seungcheol laughs it off and lays down beside him, chest rising and falling with the depth of his breaths.

“We can switch next time,” Seungcheol suggests breathlessly, smiling first at the ceiling then at Seungkwan when he turns his head. “How’s that sound?”

 

 

2.

For his senior year English literature class, Seungkwan Boo decides to drop _Pride & Prejudice_ like a hot potato and instead write about _The Catcher in the Rye_ to feel a little different and a lot edgier, but he hates Holden Caulfield and the entire book was a chore. The safe option: _To Kill a Mockingbird_.

 

 

3.

“I love you.” To say in the space of a darkened room is to say with a tiny hope. To say is to be definite.

Seungkwan looks at Seungcheol and feels the weight of youth pin his arms down. “You don’t have to say it,” he says eventually. Bags packed for college tucked in the deep corner of Seungkwan’s room. There is no future laid out for both of them, together.

“Suppose we both come back here…”

“ _Suppose_.”

“I’ll still love you,” Seungcheol insists, and it’s difficult to dissuade him after he’s solidified in his mind that what he feels is love and that what he feels is true. It’s hard to ignore the callouses from playing together as kids, then from the pens digging into the sides of their fingers as they study together, their falling down into sidewalks late at night together—it’s especially hard to ignore them pressed against Seungkwan’s face when they kiss.

 

 

4.

Seungcheol paid too much notice to the imagery of Seungkwan’s bag breaking, how the straps crumbled and fell apart and told Seungcheol that things don’t last forever. He cried when he thought about it after Jihoon pressed a bottle into his hand. He cried because he felt like he could’ve prevented it somehow.

Seungkwan got a new bag, and while he slept, Seungcheol considered the bag and how it could’ve been better than the old one.

 

 

5.

The conclusion is that the bag is a stylish dark colour, that it’s made of nylon so that raindrops bead up on the surface then slip right off.

That the straps feel as comfortable and as secure as a pair of hands gripping Seungkwan’s shoulders.

Seungcheol conceives of this right before going to bed, and sleeps easy, comforted by the thought. He forgets it when he wakes up, this conclusion, and he looks at the bag again and wonders why Seungkwan doesn’t miss the lovely soft thing riddled with buttons and the tear at the bottom that got bigger as time passed by.

 

 

6.

“I’m embarrassed to know you,” Seungcheol deadpans. The song goes on whining still, grating under Seungcheol’s skin. Maybe it was a bad idea to watch _A Single Man_ ; Seungcheol feels the loss just as Seungkwan links their fingers together, the car throttling forward to the future. (Colin Firth dies right after the dramatic resolution, and if that isn’t suggestive.) Suddenly, the song doesn’t seem all too bad.

But first—a stop at Seungcheol’s house before Seungkwan heads off. Seungkwan smiles as he drags Seungcheol up the stairs, as he makes him sit down on the forest green bedsheets.

It’s a little before noon, and Seungkwan looks radiant.

“Will you miss me?” Seungkwan teases. Seungcheol rolls his eyes and scoffs.

“Keep dreaming, Boo.”

“That would be a nightmare,” Seungkwan says even as he’s kneeling between Seungcheol’s legs, hands on either thigh, palms warm and searing past the denim of Seungcheol’s jeans.

“You should just suck my dick then leave,” Seungcheol retorts. It feels like ice when he leaves his mouth, but there isn’t any water vapour.

Seungkwan laughs, fingers playing with the button of Seungcheol’s jeans. “I will,” he says lightly. “Lift your ass.” Seungcheol does so Seungkwan could tug Seungcheol’s jeans down to his knees. He then follows it all the way through past Seungcheol’s ankles and Seungcheol’s feet, laying his mouth down on the bare skin that reveals itself, on the sensitive skin of Seungcheol’s inner thigh. By now, making Seungcheol jump is routine, just nails grazing along sensitive skin, a hard lick at the base.

But to see Seungkwan look so smug suggests Seungcheol would never tire of it, those pert lips against the tip of his dick, opening up to let Seungcheol in. Seungcheol could think of it as pretty (and it is), but when Seungkwan sucks slowly on the head and works his way down, the word that comes to Seungcheol’s mind is _tender_.

And, maybe, when Seungkwan kisses along the shaft, _final_.

“I’ll miss you,” Seungkwan admits quietly, the corner of his lips dripping white. Seungcheol wipes it off gently with his thumb and shrugs.

 

 

7.

It’s easy to feel that the world is ending at twenty-two. Maybe the earth shifts axes and suddenly winter is summer and summer is winter. Maybe it’s Seungkwan coming home after a semester abroad, summers spent away in the eagerness to find himself, and he’s blindingly beautiful on Seungcheol’s bed, on the forest green bedsheets.

“How was it?” Seungcheol asks. What was what? Everything, Seungcheol thinks. If Seungkwan found something magnificent in Spain or France or wherever the hell he was. If he’s finally learned to ride a bike and took himself across the grass of his campus.

“Last summer I interned for this marketing company in New York,” Seungkwan starts off. “I got to do all those client dinner things.”

“Did you meet anyone?”

“No. I was too busy,” Seungkwan answers with his eyebrows knitted together. “Lots of cute boys, though. And girls.”

“Sounds like New York’s my kind of city,” Seungcheol quips.

Seungkwan laughs. “Life is really fast there.” As if to say _you belong on these forest green bedsheets_. “I like it here,” he sighs as his eyes slip shut. He opens them again to face Seungcheol with a smile and pulls him closer by the hair. “You’re here.”

 

 

8.

Here’s the thing about the small town university Seungcheol went to: there is too much he knows for him to get excited. None of the familiarity of a thrumming in his fingertips against something warm. All of the things that become itch under his skin.

He waits for when all those will erupt in angry blisters.

 

 

9.

Seungkwan kisses to relearn the surface of Seungcheol’s body. Every other one feels like a request. Seungcheol kisses back in permission.

The thrumming in Seungcheol’s fingers is back. He slips them under Seungkwan’s shirt to feel the softness while Seungkwan climbs on top of him, mouth on skin in tentative kisses, like his lips shouldn’t be there, like the essence of Seungkwan’s mouth doesn’t demand its pressing against the hollow of Seungcheol’s throat. The exhale of breath is warm.

It’s also shaky. “Did you miss me?” Seungcheol asks quietly.

Seungkwan lifts his head up and nods. Seungcheol’s afraid to ask if that’s what Seungkwan was so busy doing— _missing him_. (Similarly, he’s afraid Seungkwan will ask him the same question.)

“Why?”

“You’re a good thing in my life,” Seungkwan answers plainly. He sits up and brings his shirt over his head, tossing it to the side of the bed. When he catches Seungcheol staring, tongue peeking out from between his lips, he breaks out into a grin. “So did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Date other people… Fuck other people…”

“I did, yeah,” Seungcheol answers. A laugh escapes his lips when he sees Seungkwan frown. “Jealous?”

Seungkwan scoffs. “Whatever.” Seungcheol runs his hands up Seungkwan’s arms then pulls him down by the neck, lacing his fingers together between Seungkwan’s shoulder blades.

“It doesn’t change anything,” Seungcheol tells him, “if that’s what you’re worried about.” Meaning, _I missed you, too_. He wants Seungkwan flat on his back, head framed by his pillow, so he shifts their position and cages Seungkwan with his arms.

 

 

10.

The Pantone definition of [forest green](https://www.pantone.com/color-finder/17-0230-TPX) is a light, almost lime-y sort of green. It’s nowhere near deep enough and says too much about light peeking through leaves as opposed to dense foliage and the mystery of its depths. What Seungcheol sees that is in contrast to Seungkwan’s hair, which was dyed a light colour and styled so as to maintain sophistication, is a much darker, less yellow-tinged green.

It goes by the name of [Eden](https://www.pantone.com/color-finder/PQ-19-6050TCX).

 

 

11.

It’s been a while since Seungcheol got to strip Seungkwan down to bare skin, and a while longer since Seungkwan let himself be reacquainted with Seungcheol’s tongue. How Seungcheol forgot to take off his own clothes in his haste to taste. How Seungkwan had to tug Seungcheol’s shirt by the collar to remind him.

The time: 4:46 pm. Sunset at 8:35 pm. Outside, a lone car driving home from the supermarket. Apart from that, silence.

“Cheol,” Seungkwan sighs. He licks his lips. “I want you.”

“Are you gonna cry again?” Seungcheol teases. Seungkwan slaps him on the shoulder and tells him to get on with it.

 

 

12.

The person Seungcheol dated in college had such beautiful ambition. 

 

 

13.

The fucking is too many things.

Seungkwan slicks up his fingers with lube and fucks himself while Seungcheol watches, dazed, his bottom lip caught between his teeth to chew on. The light catches on Seungkwan’s wrist as his fingers slip in and out of his entrance, and like this, they seem long and slender. They seem satisfying.

Seungcheol takes Seungkwan’s hand, takes the other, and pins them over Seungkwan’s head. He fucks Seungkwan hard and grinds into him, making Seungkwan gasp. Nothing else comes out from Seungkwan’s lips.

 

 

14.

The problem with Soonyoung is that Seungcheol couldn’t help comparing him to someone else that had beautiful ambition.

 

 

15.

Seungcheol comes first. He spills inside of Seungkwan and is left breathless, panting into the crook of Seungkwan’s neck. Seungkwan coaxes him to move a little more, until absolutely nothing is left.

After that, Seungcheol kneels between Seungkwan’s legs and takes him in his mouth, drawing him in slowly. Steady kisses along the shaft. A long, languid lick around the head and on the slit. Seungkwan keens, digs his nails into Seungcheol’s scalp while Seungcheol digs his into the soft flesh around Seungkwan’s hip.

“Not yet,” Seungcheol says with a wide grin, the head of Seungkwan’s cock tapping against his bottom lip.

“Fuck you,” Seungkwan chokes out.

“Already did.”

 

 

16.

The problem is not with Soonyoung, but with Seungcheol.

 

 

17.

The truth is that Seungcheol loves sucking dick. There’s something in the heft of it, the smell of it. How it seems to take over. The first time he heard Seungkwan moan—in the darkness of the living room, the glow of late night TV casting their skin in a blueish tint, with bodies at fifteen that are still learning how to make sense of touch—it sent chills down his spine.

He notices first the way Seungkwan’s toes curl into the mattress, then the trembling of his knees, and lets go just as Seungkwan’s come lands on his cheek and down the bridge of his nose only to go back to suck on the head, not sure if the thrumming he feels is from his fingertips or from Seungkwan’s thighs.

Seungkwan shoves him off, chest heaving. Then— “Holy shit,” he breathes out with a laugh. “Holy _fucking_ shit. Come here; I wanna kiss you.”

 

 

19.

To Jeonghan, Seungcheol’s newfound friend in college, Seungkwan is the beloved ex. “You should hear your own voice when you talk about him,” Jeonghan admonishes. “You talk like he didn’t leave you because you’re some small town hick.”

“It’s more than that,” Seungcheol argues. He can feel his own unsophistication in the rattiness of his jeans, worn thin and faded beyond the factory-produced acid wash, none of that softness right at retail.

“It’s not. I would’ve left you, too, if I got into an Ivy League school.”

“He wanted to move there, find a job. I couldn’t come with him,” Seungcheol says plainly. From laughing at him, Jeonghan ends up softening his look.

“Ah, that can’t be helped, but you could always try to keep up.”

 

 

20.

Try, meaning fail.

 

 

21.

On his first dinner with a client, Seungkwan chews on his food properly and remembers to take a sip of wine every three or so bites. It’s pacing; he can’t control his own alcohol. He also remembers to be charming; the boss is watching.

At home, he toes off his shoes and shrugs off his coat, loosens his necktie and slips it off his neck, unbuttons the first few buttons of his shirt. Then he pads into the bathroom and kneels down on the floor in front of the toilet.

 

 

22.

“Are you going home?” Seungcheol asks. He’s only gotten up to wipe the come from his face then to pass Seungkwan his shirt when he asks for it. Seungkwan puts it back on, a nice light blue and soft from so many trips to the washing machine. It looks so good on the forest green bedsheets like it wants to say _I belong here, too_.

Perhaps it’s the size of the bed, how it’s too small to really fit both of them comfortably, but they’ve always made it work, and Seungcheol’s gotten used to sleeping with his back against the wall, Seungkwan cradled in his arms, smelling of sweat and sex and soap.

“I guess?” Seungkwan answers, but he lets out a yawn. “Do you want me to?”

“Do _you_ want to?” Seungcheol counters.

“Give me a pair of boxers,” Seungkwan instructs. Seungcheol gives him the first one in the drawer that he sees, watches Seungkwan shimmy into them on the bed. The area between his legs is shiny with sticky, cooling come and flashes light before the whole thing is covered by Seungcheol’s red boxers. He makes a face. “I look like a PE student.”

“You can still do the walk of shame back to your house,” suggests Seungcheol lightly. It isn’t a far walk—just a few blocks down then a sharp right.

Seungkwan shakes his head and burrows his head further into the pillow, patting the space behind his back for Seungcheol to lay on. “I already did that coming here.”

 

 

23.

According to Barthes, absence is felt on the I as the entity that gets left behind. If there is a consequence of leaving and if it acts as baggage on the one that leaves, it’s valid, yes, but cannot be called _absence_.

And so the I says and feels _I am loved less than I love_.

 

 

24.

Seungkwan is at his most gentle in his sleep. Here, Seungcheol can hold on to him a little tighter and feel the roundness of his cheeks, but today, he feels a sharp jut of jaw and he spends some time getting used to the slide of it against his fingers.

 

 

25.

Seungcheol wakes up before Seungkwan does. And again follows the heartbreaking mapping of Seungkwan’s face—the sharpness is there and palpable, vivid. If he wanted, he can imagine the tip of his finger being sliced open as it runs down the edge.

A list: roots showing when one peers close into Seungkwan’s scalp, eyebrows knitted together that smooth out when Seungcheol runs his hand through them, a tense mouth to murmur _Seungcheol, stop_ , and whether or not it’s for the Seungcheol whose arm is fast around his waist, Seungcheol stops and tries to bring himself back to sleep.

 

 

26.

When he wakes up, Seungkwan is gone. The bed is still warm, and if Seungcheol strains his ears, he can hear the front door clicking shut. Before that, the soft footfall of Seungkwan in his socks going down the flight of stairs.

Seungcheol gets up and fixes himself breakfast.

 

 

27.

It’s time to change the bedsheets, Seungcheol thinks. When the forest green bedsheets are in the wash, there is a replacement set in the same colour. He goes to the store and picks himself up a set of white.

 

 

28.

White as the presence of light, that is to say, the presence of all colours. In just the right light, Seungcheol’s new bedsheets could be forest green, but it’s no longer a light Seungcheol wants to be in.

 

 

29.

At the age of twenty-five, Seungcheol finds it in himself to move out. There’s a job offer in the next city, and they’ll help with living arrangements. Seungcheol can live in a shoebox for all he cares, but he likes himself a little more than that.

“You should,” Jihoon says.

Seungcheol bites his tongue and sips on his beer instead. _It feels like I’m running away_. The other solution is for him to strip his skin raw, but Jihoon gently reminds him that skin sheds and those hands aren’t the same ones that have touched Seungkwan.

 

 

30.

Heraclitus argues, “You could not step twice in the same river.” Perhaps he should’ve said, “You could not touch twice the same body.”

 

 

31.

“Ah, so you’re trying to break free from the small town boy life,” Jeonghan teases over the phone. Seungcheol’s all packed, boxes sealed, toiletries in the personal bag that will keep him company in shotgun.

Right now, Seungcheol’s picking through CDs. “Radiohead’s Greatest Hits?” he asks.

“Leave it,” Jeonghan answers. “Remember your Fall Out Boy phase?”

“Shit.”

Jeonghan barks out a laugh. It crackles. “What’s that album that you like so much? The one with the red bear?”

“It was red and had a bear,” Seungcheol corrects. He finds it and puts it into a box even though he can’t remember a single song on it. “It’s still a small town, by the way, just thirty minutes away.”

“Does ex know?”

“Does ex care?” Seungcheol retorts.

“Ouch.”

“You think he’s doing well over there?”

“As well as anyone, I think,” Jeonghan answers. “Do you want him to do badly?” At this point on, Jeonghan can be doing literally anything—he could be getting fucked right now and still think he should help Seungcheol decide what scent of candle his new living room deserves.

“No.”

 

 

32.

Five minutes into the new place, and Seungcheol already wants to drive back home, but instead takes in a deep breath and tries to enjoy the stale air.

 

 

33.

Jihoon suggested to write everything down, but all Seungcheol can muster is a huge “FUCK YOU” in angry black marker until his hand stops shaking and he can finally write something down.

 

 

34.

“Hi,” Seungkwan says quietly. In glaring white, the envelope with Seungkwan’s name on it that Seungcheol brought with him home for the holidays. The hickey on the side of his neck is a sickly green like it’s been there a while, probably too painful to top off with another. “So you’re home.”

“This is my home,” Seungcheol deadpans.

“Yeah. Your mom let me in. Happy holidays.”

 

 

35.

There is a tenderness inside the fucking, but it doesn’t mean they’re in love. Seungkwan seems to say he’s sorry, sorry for tearing up the letter on the desk. He doesn’t need to read what it contains.

Maybe it’s romantic, but awfully presumptuous nonetheless.

_I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry_ — Seungkwan pins Seungcheol down on the couch and undoes his belt, pulling his pants down to the knee. He tries to slick himself up with spit, but it still burns, making his face contort as he seats himself on Seungcheol’s cock. With a hand steady on Seungcheol’s chest, he begins a slow and steady grind.

Maybe it’s better Seungkwan doesn’t see that Seungcheol’s sheets are now white. Maybe he’ll frown at them and be less of a stellar fuck.

Seungkwan cries out when Seungcheol pulls him down to suck on the skin with the dying bruise. _Fuck you, I had something to say._

 

 

36.

Their first kiss was in an alley behind a convenience store, mouths warm from gross, squishy hotdogs and shy from the thought of getting caught. Seungcheol brought them there to kiss beside the dumpster.

Seungkwan laughed with a wrinkle of his nose. “This is the memory you’re creating,” he warns, to which Seungcheol shrugs.

“I couldn’t wait, sorry.” With Seungcheol’s hand extended, curled around the back of Seungkwan’s neck, he pulls him in and presses their lips together.

 

 

37.

In retrospect, it could’ve been a better kiss.

 

 

38.

The thing with white sheets is that the stains either glare or remain invisible. They gain colour as time goes on, as opposed to time leeching it out.Seungcheol moves back home the same day his mother puts his white bedsheets in the washing machine because his aunt had come over recently to spend the weekend and who knows what may have been caught in the fabric before then.

He lays down on the forest green bedsheets and falls asleep right away. 

 

 

39.

This is the dream Seungcheol has: Seungkwan’s husband fucking Seungkwan into the forest green bedsheets, how he looks so good—well-fitted, even—in a space he never once owned or entered. How Seungkwan looks estatic about the grinding yet manages to smile at Seungcheol, who was cradling him from behind.

To distinguish dream from fantasy, there is the consolation kiss Mingyu places on his lips. And the consolation blowjob from Seungkwan. He wakes up before he can come, sweat pooling into the small of his back.

It turns out Seungkwan moved back home, too, and it seems like the fantasy is shifting closer into something Seungcheol dreads realisation of.

 

 

40.

In mathematics, a constant is defined as fixed and well-defined. That is to say, it demands to remain unchanging despite changes in its system and in its input.

That is to say, to be a home. That is to say, _stay_. 

“We’re filing for divorce,” Seungkwan says without warning.

“So when will I get to surprise you for once?” Seungcheol asks drily. Seungkwan flops down on the couch beside him with the bottle of wine, two glasses in hand.

“Fuck this life,” Seungkwan sighs. “Never get married.”

“Never had to.” It doesn’t mean to bite, not anymore. Seungcheol wonders if Mingyu thinks of the same irreconcilable differences, how they maybe wouldn’t be so irreconcilable.

“I’m sorry.”

Seungcheol snorts at that and offers himself some wine. “Don’t be,” he says. It could be honest. 

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler: I joined a fic fest that will post in early January. Apart from that, I’m taking a break from fic. As much as I think I’ve gotten better, it came at the cost of my emotional wellbeing, so I want to find the middle ground, but this isn’t for sure. Thank you so much for reading and getting to this point. <3


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